Posts tagged ‘dessert’

July 5, 2011

A bit of Hungarian: Cold fruit soup recipe!

 

The reason I`m saying it`s Hungarian is, I never saw cold fruit soup in other countries, but I might be wrong. Well summer is here and it`s always nice to have something refreshing and new, so I thought I give this one a go and see how people like the idea. In my country its very popular, easy to make even thou the recipe changes pretty much in every household. I don`t think I ever made one with the exact same ingredients, so here I`ll just give you a general guide and ideas to how to prepare the soup. Yes we are talking about a sweet dish, but it’s not a dessert, well it can be, it’s up to you really, ones with the sweet tooth going to fall in love with  that`s for sure.

To start cooking: For the base I always use the juices of canned fruits, the general base is the juice and brine of sour cherries, the fruits I’ll keep aside for the finish. Basically you can make a pretty good mix out of whatever you got at home: pineapple juice, apple, peaches..don`t use orange juice thou. My favourite mixes are from berries anyway, frozen or fresh it’s up to you. But note the fruits only go into the soup, when its ready, those you don`t need to cook. Sometimes when I use lemons, oranges etc for cooking I keep the skin and free it for later, those can be added to the sop base as well. Here is a basic recipe for approx. 4 people… but this one you’ll always need to taste while cooking, as of course quality of the juices or the wine can differ, sometimes you need more sugar or etc. Basically you need to taste a sweet, aromatic flavour, and of course the taste of the wine as well. Trust me it`s worth experimenting! Once you find the right ingredients you will see its very very easy to make!

Ingredients

0,5kg of fresh or frozen fruits, sour cherries, berries..

4 spoons of sugar

pinch of salt

2-3 cinnamon sticks

5 cloves

1 liter of fruit juice from canned fruits – especially from sour cherries

2-2 lemons and oranges cut in half

0,5 liter of dry red wine

0,5 liter of water

For thickening: 3 spoons of white flour, 2 dl of sour creme, of creme fraiche

Put the water, the juices, wine cinnamon, cloves, lemons, oranges, sugar, salt into a pot and bring it to boil. Taste, if you find it a bit tasteless or not sweet enough add some more sugar, or wine or juices. Mix the flour with the sour creme in a separate bowl, mix in a couple of spoons of the hot soup base, and whisk it in the boiling soup to thicken it. Bring it to boil again. Transfer trough a colander into a serving bowl, getting rod of the cinnamon, etc, add the fruits, and let it cool. Keep in fridge until serving!

Enjoy!

May 16, 2011

Recipe: Cottage cheesy doughnut balls with raspberry jam.

Of course I`m not going to leave without a recipe, even if this one won`t fit into any of my dietary days. Also I promised more Hungarian recipes, cos they are fun, cos most of my readers are from The States, or pretty much anywhere from around the World, besides that 3-4 fans I have from my country. So this might be interesting for you “outsiders” 🙂

If there`s one thing we love more than doughnuts, is cottage cheese. Of course we are convinced, the best cottage cheese is indeed in Easter Europe, and nothing tastes so good, or even close. To be honest, I managed to find decent once in Australia, even in England, so this legend might be false, or ricotta also does the trick, even it`s hard for us to admit.

Why do I like this so much? Well it`s fried, there`s cottage cheese in it, and it`s easy. If you don`t belive me just read the recipe:)

Ingredients

500g cottage cheese

250 g all purpose flour

4 eggs

1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda

pinch of salt

Crumble the cottage cheese into a flour. Mix in the eggs, the bicarbonate of soda and the pinch of salt in a bowl, and work the ingredients well together.

Spoon them into hot oil, and fry until golden brown. They need to be the size not bigger then a golf ball when ready, you`ll see it almost doubles the size while frying, so make sure the middle will be cooked as well.

So serving suggestion: Icing sugar, vanilla icing sugar, jams. I used raspberry jam, as I have a fixation for raspberry, but you can use anything you want really.

You see? I told you it was easy!

Enjoy! xxx

March 23, 2011

Recipe: deep fried Mars bars!

Well, I remember when I moved to Sydney and entered to one of Bondi`s infamous chip shops, and noticed this Mars bar treat on the menu, I wasn`t convinced. Back then, I wasn`t really adventurous. Also I wasn`t convinced after 1 year as well, I thought I try and try and try later later later… Never happened.  And I was finishing college and finishing with Australian living and thought I must try this once, this and gambling.

The fried Mars bar was surprisingly good, before I tried to imagine how it might taste, I was close,but my imaginary version wasn`t nearly as good. Let me start, the dessert doesn`t taste as bad as it sounds. Actually it`s kinda delicious. The chocolate melts well with the batter, which still holds the whole thing together, it`s almoust like a chocolate filled doughnut, but much better! Anyway, you must try!

Of course the Aussies say it`s their invention, but I’ve been noted by a few people, that it`s oridinated to Scotland, and it`s a popular part of the chip shops “healthy diet”. Wikipedia says the same thing. Anyway I never been, and the Aussies and the Scots can argue on this as much as they want.  Today it`s been tested on 30 sweet loving people, who were very satisfied.


Ingredients

4 Mars bars

150 g self raising flour

150g dry coconut

2 eggs

1 cup milk

pinch of salt

plenty oil for frying.

Keep Mars bars in fridge before frying.

Make batter, with flour, coconut, milk, egg and salt in a bowl. It needs to b a bit thicker then a pancake mix. Just like any other batter.

Heat oil.

Take mars bars out of the fridge,, (remove packaging of course..) roll into flour, then dip into batter, make sure it covers the whole bar.

Gently put it in the hot oil. It has to cover the whole bar. It fries in approx. 1 minute, so make sure don`t burn.

It it straight up, maybe with some vanilla ice cream!

Enjoy!